“Four years is too long for anyone to keep up an act fully,” he confessed. Another realization he’d come to while he’d been captured with nothing else to do while he waited for night and the forced rut to come but read the same three books over again.
“He may not be a weak or gentle omega,” Sloane agreed, “but the arrogance? The brattiness? You’ve experienced both. They were very real. As the years went on, and he became more and more comfortable around you, it was harder for him to keep it hidden. I saw it. I know you did as well.”
“I explained it away,” he said. “He’d been through so much this past year alone. I thought…”
“There’s only one event that truly got to him.” Anger flashed across her face, there and gone in an instant, but incredibly vicious. “He never meant to be kidnapped. The breeding den, being forced to sleep with an alpha that wasn’t you…It changed him. I believe that’s why he rushed things. Why he was so keen to reveal himself to you and drop the act.Maintaining the mask has been the most important thing to him all this while, but as soon as he was rescued, he couldn’t hold it together the same way.”
She was right. Shiloh’s emotional outbursts had gotten worse since then, but again, Sarang had attested that to his traumatic experience. It was, just not in the way that he’d assumed.
“They were still able to take him, even with his skills?” Sarang asked, not because he doubted that Shiloh’s kidnapping had been real, but because he wanted to better understand.
“He was too focused on his stupid plan with Lane to get your attention,” she stated. “He was constantly setting up little shows like that. Setting the stage so you could swoop in and play hero. Whenever your attention waned, he would pull another act. You pieced that together on your own by now, haven’t you?”
He had, but he hadn’t realized the plotting was linked to his attention.
“My brother is obsessed with you,” she clarified. “The second your eyes are elsewhere, he gets anxious. Anxiety and doubt make him dangerous, as you’ve seen. I assume he’s kept you at the secret business he’s been building under Kian’s nose. That the reason you’re holding him now is to return the insult. Our mother used to do far worse to us whenever she felt we’d stepped out of line, so I trust he can handle being confined.”
Sloane took another step closer, the first brush of her dominant pheromones warningly flicking across his skin. “She’d beat us bloody until we promised to be good little soldiers.”
Sarang barely resisted the urge to cover his nose, the smell of her heady and, frankly, making him queasy. It shouldn’t have. It wasn’t like he wasn’t familiar with her scent, and yet…Was it because she wasn’t his omega?
Had his body well and truly already chosen, to the point there was no use pretending otherwise?
He needed to test that theory, but he couldn’t do it while standing here with her.
“You’re telling me that you both learned how to placate her and give her the impressions of you that she wanted to see,” Sarang said, knowing that, while that was true, it had not at all been the angle Sloane had been going for.
Sure enough, another blast of threatening pheromones came, and this time he couldn’t prevent himself from actively gagging.
Which seemed to catch her attention in an unexpected way, for she immediately pulled her scent back, head tilting.
“That sly brother of mine,” she mumbled, clearly to herself, but Sarang caught it.
“What?”
“He’s imprinted on you.”
Sarang bristled. “Excuse me?” Surely he would have noticed if that were the case…right?
She retreated a full step. “It’ll hardly change anything, but I’ll respect his wishes. For now. My warning stands, underboss. Hurt him—in any way he won’t enjoy—and I’ll separate your head from your body faster than you can blink. And, Sarang? I’m not talking about the one between your shoulders.”
Chapter 22:
“How do you feel?” Sarang played a card and casually asked, trying to keep the mood light. He’d left the omega alone to stew for a whole day and a half, but hadn’t been capable of staying away longer than that.
The two of them were on the bed, Shiloh still naked, his lap covered by the blankets. If he was bothered by it, he didn’t say, hadn’t complained once or asked for clothing. In fact, he’d been nothing but agreeable, pliant and seemingly relaxed.
Was it an act? Was he trying to fool Sarang again?
He’d been collecting stories from the Hierarchy members who were on planet, learning what he could about the prince’s past and who he’d been before Sarang had entered the picture. Who he’d been known as.
Apparently, a straight up demon.
At the age of sixteen he’d earned the moniker, Garmr, based off an ancient mythological hound that guarded the gates of Hel. His mother specifically sent him on the bloodiest missions, trusting that he’d get the job done since carnage was his vice. On one of those missions, Shiloh had been ambushed and forced to flee.
That was how he’d run into Sarang.
But his emotional range, or lack thereof, had been kept close to the chest. No one seemed to know that Shiloh had done more than simply act weak in front of Sarang. People had even told him they equated his relaxed personality to their meeting.
